The interim law librarian: Part 1 - OSCOLA

Rewritten 24th June 2022

I am covering part of a vacancy, so am a law librarian in addition to the day job.   An interim law librarian, if you like, or, if you prefer health terminology, a locum.

These "interim law librarian" posts are not designed to be introductions to law librarianship, of which there are already plenty by proper law librarians.

Instead, they are observations about law librarianship, by a health librarian.

The source of most enquiries has been OSCOLA, being the referencing style used by our Law School (and many others).   I have had the occasional enquiry in the past from health students about how to reference UK  legal materials.    Harvard can cope - there are examples in our guide (and in Cite Them Right).   Our guide to Vancouver said nothing, and what we could find in the longer guides related to US law, so for our own guide to Vancouver, my law librarian colleague and I devised examples.    

It is a footnote style and uses ibid (neither of which I have needed to worry about before now) and of course tells you how to reference sources that are peculiar to law.

As well as general enquiries about it, is this reference correct, how to reference a website, there have been more complicated enquiries, like referencing US state law or law from other countries, and secondary referencing.

The "other countries" enquiry involved two countries, one covered in the excellent IALS LibGuides, under Jurisdiction guides, the other not, but the US BlueBook seemed to take a similar approach to OSCOLA, recommending using citation practice from the country in question, so their advice seemed to apply.  I thought.

Some enquirers have wanted their references checked - my regular enquirers ask this as well - we don't really do this but for OSCOLA it was a useful exercise for me, while trying not to proof read!

Where have I found help relating to OSCOLA?   Our own guide, of course, is first port of call and is bookmarked.   I watched the videos my colleague made for her students about OSCOLA, very helpful.   Also bookmarked are a couple of other libraries' guides (in case), Oxford's own guide (the long one, not the short one), and I have also downloaded the OSCOLA chapter from Cite Them Right.  And I have a colleague who supports researchers who knows about OSCOLA.